I found out this morning that because of insurance issues I can’t see my psychiatrist of 15 years anymore. The same is true for my therapist. They have covered these things for all this time.

All of the mental health help I was considered out of network. They changed the the policy to be that out of network mental health coverage is no longer covered at all. Each of the various appointments are at least $400.

Obviously that’s not an option. I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ll ask my Dr and therapist for recommendations of Drs that are in network.

I can’t believe it. Anyone that who is treated for mental illness will understand why I am so upset.

I am overwhelmed. I say this as the caption of this painting because I was pretty happy when I was painting. It was art therapy . I get help for my bipolar and my fibromyalgia and spinal stenosis from that.

It’s time for a chatty blog about my life and thoughts. This sounds funny but I’m trying to reach myself to type with both of my thumbs. if I was 30 years younger I would be very good at it!

I’m having a lot of trouble with my health insurance. They say my psychiatrist is out of network, though they,’ve counted her as in network for over a decade. so they are charging me full price for a whole lot of visits. They say I owe $3,500! The doctor is having her assistant work on it and my husband has done a lot of work on it and so have i.

I see my therapist tomorrow. Yay!

I have been in an especially large amount of pain. My medical marijuana has been extremely helpful, it always is!

These days I’ve been smoking pre rolled joints. It’s an expensive way to take my medicine. I’m taking the capsules sometimes; depending how how I feel.

I used to hate smoking, because of my mother who smoked 2-3 packs a day for 50 years. I didn’t smoke pot until I met my husband who wasn’t a stoner, (it makes laugh to think of it) but smoked a lot of weed. That was the beginning of my stoned life. It was 1994.

Losing weight is still on a plateau, but that’s ok because I’m maintaining at my best weight. My fingers got small enough for me to wear my wedding ring set. yay!

Depression depression depression.

Pain pain pain

Anxiety Anxiety Anxiety

I got new phone, thanks dad! I bought the LG 6G, unlocked. it’s_ lovely. My old one died the very same day.

I suspect I’ll be up late tonight. I wanna watch Deadpool. This afternoon I sort of watched it…I saw the very beginning and the very end. I slept through pretty much all of it. Doh! I’m glad I didn’t see it in the theater! I’m going to give it another chance tonight.

I haven’t been to the comic book store in a couple of months. I used go every Tuesday to talk to the owner who works there sometimes. We became friends because I often came into the store, buying lots and lots of comics for a couple years. He suggested so many great books for me to read and introduced me to his favorite author, who soon became my favorite, too. Scott Snyder has written books that are favorites of both of ours.

I stopped going there because once I went there when I was very depressed and was barely holding it together. A couple tears escaped and I walked out without saying goodbye. I promised myself that I wouldn’t go see him anymore. I guess I felt ashamed. I was punishing both of us because of my mental illness. He knew about it and was very understanding.

I let myself go there today, partly because I really wanted to see him and I just want to hang out in the store. All those comics, perfectly organized. It was also was because after I thought my decision to never go back was kind of over the top and silly, I guess.

Maybe it wasn’t so silly after all. Today he was glad to see me and didn’t asked where I’d been. It was thoughtful. But my social anxiety kicked in and instead of being able to see him and have a nice talk, I froze. I couldn’t say a thing. I bought something and left. I cried on the way home.

It makes me cringe. I feel like a coward ditching one of my real life friends, someone really that was so good to talk to is ironic that it’s ending because I can’t talk. I’m going to try not to go there anymore. Or should I go back and be honest? I dunno. It really made me feel shitty since I was hoping it would cheer me up.

I went to group today. It was good, which is a strange thing to say since 2 people decided they would check themselves into a mental hospital.

My diabetes still isn’t under control, which is causing me a great of stress. I’m not eating g badly. I just have trouble taking my shots, I forget and sometimes i just don’t take it. I’m not sure why.

A lot of things in my life are areas that I’m not sure about and that sucks.

Ending on a lighter note, for years u thought it would be awesome if you could go to the store and but a pack of joints. In this case the dispensary is the store but with that in mind,my fantasy came true!

I’m kind of excited about this drawing. I always want to make outsider art and most of the time it doesn’t feel right. I think I got what what I was looking for.

When I saw my therapist last week and she told me to get the bad feelings out. She told me yell! So I did and what i ended up shouting almost involuntarily, fuck you fuck you fuck you etc.

Recently I wrote about art therapy. This is a great example of that. This drawing is how I felt when I was yelling in my therapist’s office. Drawing this was another way of getting negative feelings out.

I drew it all in one sitting. I really didn’t want to stop the process, so I kept working on it.once I got going it was easy.

I did it with prismacolor markers. I wanted to express the insanity I felt so I didn’t use any pencil or ink outlines, just straight up color and shapes.

This sort of artwork makes me so nervous. It’s way outside my comfort zone. but that’s a good thing for an artist.

Since I’m not skilled at drawing and I rarely post pieces that are raw and negative I feel vulnerable. It’s totally uncensored and totally unpolished.

It’s National Fried Chicken Day!!I LOVE fried chicken! The second) good news will be ruined unless I only eat a little bit o. But oh I really want plates of it!

What a bummer that other countries aren’t having national fried chicken day. If anyone hasn’t had American style fried chicken, come have dinner at my house. My husband is frying enough chicken for thousands!

The other news is pretty exciting!

As of this morning I have lost 57 pounds! (26kg)

I’m still losing I don’t have a goal, even though they say you should. if someone asked my advice even *I* would say it was a good idea. Right now I don’t I’m trying to pretend it’s not happening. That can help me do well and to stress less. I really don’t get it. I eat very lightly but I just don’t feel tempted. I don’t think about food most of the time. Maybe my depressive episode is to thank for it. Yay for depression. Ugh.

I want to go in an imaginary world where I can lock myself into my bedroom and have a pillow fight with myself. It would be zero gravity, so almost no pain! I need my beloved soda stream! My dog, water, comicbooks, alllll the pillows and blankets we have,and …LOTS of other stuff!

My huzzy does everything that needs to be done. I’m struggling to stop feeling guilty; last night after dinner I played with my phone while trying not to watch him clean up the dinner *he* cooked.

Everybody who reads my blog a lot (thank you lovely people) knows that I’m disabled. I have fibromyalgia and spinal stenosis, I walk with a cane. I have a lot of chronic pain, so there’s no way I can help with anything. I want to so much. I want to do things, like very simple stuff like putting the dishes in the dishwasher, but I can’t. I can’t stand up very long and bending over is not an option.

I want you to know, fuzzy huzzy, that you are the best husband a girl could have! Our 24th anniversary is at the end of July. Pretty impressive, I think!💞🌹

The huz takes excellent care of me. He’s a fab cook and he really enjoys that. But who enjoys going to the grocery store and the farmer’s market to, go to the post office and such. Thank goodness we’re able to have a cleaning service come in.

He never complains, he’s never late, he doesn’t neglect things that need be done. He’s not perfect, but he’s the best choice i ever made. 💘💒

It’s hot and i didn’t notice again. Lol it’s 90F (34c)! Lol! I think i’m going to walk down the stairs very very carefully! Have a good evening, all.

I’m laying on the couch all propped up with pillows with a heating pad behind me. I took an mmj edible and a prescription NSAID.

My back is a bitch. My spine problems are acting up. I can just hear L4 and L5 screaming. Sometimes it’s like needles poking inside or sometimes an intense ache or a feeling of extreme tightness or it can be something that feels like a great deal of pressure. It occurs to me that I should check out things specifically for lumbar support.

Low back pain is the most common medical ailment. That’s what a doctor told me when I saw him a few years ago, for….low back pain. He told me to take Ibuprofen. If he had paid a little more attention, maybe he would have been able to see that I needed more than to just take Ibuprofen. I’m sure he was right about his statistic, but he never even asked questions about my pain or any specifics. Doctors probably see a few people a day who say they have low back pain. I can see how they have an automatic answer for the problem, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling some measure of bitterness

I got the feeling that he thought all the low back potential patients were drug seekers. I have to admit that I would have been glad if he had given me painkillers but that’s not why I went to see him and I didn’t ask for them.

ANYWAY, lol, I didn’t go to the movies this week because there was nothing to see. I was very disappointed; I love going to the movies, it’s such a treat! Maybe if I have a couple of weeks (there’s nothing good showing this week either) without going, it will keep it a treat. Wow, though–July and August are going to be fab movie months!

Netflix has become a really close friend. I think most chronically ill people would agree. I’ve been having a fibromyagia flare, a spinal stenosis flare, and my newly coined term, a depression flare. So I’ve been watching anything that seems mildly interesting.

I was able to keep creating through everything. That’s a sanity saver. I painted every day! Lately I am using my Japanese watercolors on watercolor paper. For the last two years when I painted with watercolors, which was a lot, I used Yupo, a synthetic paper that isn’t pourous.

I need to start working in my watercolor journal with watercolor pens again. It turned out that I liked the first set of those pens, which I bought spontaneously when I was in the art store for some paint, enough to get another set a couple of weeks ago. I’m going to finish this watercolor journal and get another. I like making these as epic gifts or to sell.

I’m on a plateau in my weightloss journey. I’m mostly 57 pounds (26kg) down but right now I’m going up a pound or two and down a pound or two. I’m eating sparsely to try to getting back to losing weight. Basically I’m maintaining my weight which is enough for me to feel ok, in the short term.

Saying how much I have lost and that there is more to go, is really really hard because saying that shows that I was pretty damn big and I’m not small in the least now. I’ve never said that on the interwebz before.

When I was a kid my parents had me write in a journal what I watched on TV and how long I spent watching. I was only allowed 8 hours per week, including Saturday morning cartoons!

I didn’t know what my classmates were talking about when they got excited about shows they watched every night. I was amazed when they talked about watching TV all day on Saturdays.

My parents were both teachers and were left wing idealists. So I was raised differently from my friends. We never had any junk food around, I wasn’t allowed to eat sugar cereal and I had to drink diet soda. All these things don’t seem like that much, but together, especially the way kids latch onto anything they see as different, like me. Not only was I weird because I had very little experience with pop culture, but I really liked the learning part of school too! god forbid a kid cares about what is being taught​!

My whole life, as an adult, and even when I was in university, I didn’t watch much TV and rarely went to the movies. If someone turned on a TV I’d leave the room (I did watch Twin Peaks and Ren and Stimpy and a bit of MTV. That was when they showed music videos and bizarre, wonderful things like Liquid TV)

Even my favorite shows weren’t imporant to me. I could pass a few weeks and not watch anything.

For many years I didn’t even own a tv. When my husband insisted on buying a big tv I had a fit! I made him put it in the computer room. He liked to play console games on it, too. That seemed like a reasonable use of a tv.

My huz and I had many little conflicts about him wanting us to watch things together and I didn’t. I didn’t want him to watch anything at, but I was very insecure and had to be in the same room as my husband. Poor guy! I followed him around crying.

Having a tablet and Netflix made it all change. I could watch things alone, and I didn’t have to compromise on what to watch. Netflix original shows provided excellent content that actually kept my interest.

now I watch a couple of hours a day and I go to the movies at least once a week. Considering how bored I get, being stuck at home with my illnesses keeping me from doing things most people do, watching stuff is a bit of a life saver. It makes time pass more quickly.

on thursday i am going to have my sixth epidural steroid injection. the injection helps control the pain from the problems in my back. i have spinal stenosis which is a narrowing of the spinal column which causes some if the discs to get squashed (like my technical term?) and pinch nerves.

i have problems at L4 and L5 as well as the sacroiliac joint. my pain doctor performs the procedure.

they say “procedure” but to me it seems a lot like surgery! i have to fast, stop taking NSAIDS several days before, etc. i go to the surgery center and change into a hospital gown, a icky papery shower cap sort of thing to gather up my hair. they give you cool socks with treads on the bottom. i love them. i’ve quite a collection now.

two nurses come in and put you under a blanket from a warmer, oh jeez that feels good. no matter how hot it outside, it’s freezing cold in the surgery center, plus it’s just reassuring to have a warm blanket over you. they put in an iv and ask me a million questions. even though i’ve done this many times, i still feel a little scared each time.

the nurses are so very very nice. when the doctor finishes her previous case she comes in and talks to me and then they roll me into the OR which is incredibly cold. i have to roll over onto the operating table and lay on my tummy. there is a head rest, like they use during massages. they start giving me fentynal and versed–conscious sedation. you are high as a kite, so it’s almost fun. lol

i hate laying there for 45 minutes with basically nothing on, my butt just hanging out, uncovered. joy. luckily the drugs make you not care too much because i find it extremely discomforting to be nude in a room full of people. there are lots of nurses. the doctor wears a lead apron because they use a giant x-ray machine that is mounted on the ceiling and tilts around as they need it to. that’s how they know exactly where to inject the cortisone…pretty important since they’re putting it in my spine. the injections hurt some going in, but after that it’s not too bad.

when they’re done i get back on the gurney, more embarrassment because the hospital gown is totally open and practically flapping around as you move. then everybody gets to see everything! i’m sure they don’t give a shit, seen it a million times. but i do! once you’re on the gurney they immediately drown you in warm blankets. the feeling is so good, like the drugs, it’s almost worth it just for that. lol

in the recovery room they put ice packs on your back, keep you awhile for making sure your vitals are good and you’re not going to have a bad reaction or flip out or whatever.

omg i have to pee once i get out of the operating room, so that’s a priority! another time i had this surgery, the surgeon was an hour an half late so i feel asleep. i woke up and they were rolling me into the OR and i had to pee bad, i mean really really bad. but we were practically there so i couldn’t say anything. it was horrible! i was pretty sure i would wet myself on the table. that’s not so good for a sterile environment. thank goodness the drugs made it so i didn’t feel like i had to pee. when i got out of surgery, i didn’t have to pee badly, go figure!

you don’t stay in the recovery long and your ride comes and takes you home. you have to have someone stay with you for 24 hours. then the back pain kicks in. it’s pretty unfun for a few days. i’ve got quite a bit of various medical marijuana edibles for that time.

after that, you wait. sometimes the injections work and sometimes they don’t. it’s a crap shoot. last one keep my pain low for about 9 months! most of the others did nothing. but i’ll try anything time after and after. the pain is very motivating.